“Go ahead!”
“Sing us some of those things you spoke of, Cal.”
So John took Ned’s place and sang right through his repertoire before he was allowed to get up. His accompaniments weren’t ambitious, but he managed fairly well, and the songs he sang, most of them old ballads of the sea that he had heard all his life, didn’t demand much of the piano to make them go. Toward the last the others began to dip into the choruses with him, and there was one rollicking refrain that caught their fancy at once and for years after remained a classic at Oak Park. They made John sing that over and over, and howled in unison:
“Yo heave ho! When the wind do blow
It’s up with the sail and away we go!
We’ll catch the slant to Georges’ Bank,
And we won’t be home for a month or so;
Yo ho! Yo ho!
We won’t be home for a month or so!”
“That’s a winner!” declared Hoop. “‘Yo heave ho!’ What’s the name of it?”
“I don’t think it has any name,” answered John. “Leastways, I never heard any.”
“Its name is ‘Yo Heave Ho,’” declared The Fungus. “‘Yo heave ho! And away we—’”
“Kill him, someone!” begged Spud.
“It’s most ten, boys,” said Mrs. Linn. “Off with you.”